553rd played so far
Genre: Adventure/Fighting
Platform: Playstation 2/XBox
Year of Release: 2005
Developer: Rockstar Toronto
Publisher: Rockstar Games
The Warriors is a 1979 action movie starring… well, to be honest, I can’t say the names are that familiar to me. It’s a movie about street gangs and one’s attempt at dominance. This one was made into a game some twenty five years later for… well, I’m not quite sure why.
So here we have the prequel game, having several returning actors (and some sound-a-likes) to show how the titular gang revived itself. It’s an odd choice – and the game ending up on this list indicates it might well have surpassed the movie in fame. We’ll see how well that worked.
Our Thoughts
The Warriors probably feels closer to Yakuza 2 than anything else. Both have some amount of open world action with a focus on close combat fighting action. Both focus more on large levels rather than a full open world, with more open action in these areas. At the same time, the way your events are structured are quite different. While Yakuza focuses on small focus bits integrated into the world, The Warriors direct you to specific missions in the level.
This applies to story as well – while that mostly stays in the world in Yakuza 2, The Warriors has its own set of levels for these. They aren’t really reused as far as I can tell, and allow for more focused playing/storytelling, including some stealth sections and different mechanics. So far they also all mix it up – some are just about causing as much damage as possible – which made for some nice changes in pacing. They get mirrored in the open world activities too, which have smaller versions of those goals.
The game doesn’t quite get there compared to modern graphics, using the usual realistic at the time, but looked outdated now – not bad, but clearly trying to get somewhere with what they had available at the time. It’s contrasting enough to make sure it’s not too bland or fades into the background too much, making it functional – but it certainly doesn’t hold up as well as it could.
Most interesting there are the sounds. As said, the game uses a number of the original voice actors, supplmented by some new voices that I assume are soundalikes. It sounds good, and adds to make the game more convincing than you often hear in these games.
Final Thoughts
While this isn’t the Grand Theft Auto series, in this case the added story in this game that comes from absorbing an existing world into the game. Banter feels a lot more natural and a lot of story feels like it grows organically. It certainly has its flaws, but the game plays well enough to want to try more – and indeed it took me a while to put the game down.